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In all states, most doctors
and other individual practitioners refuse to participate in
Medicaid because of low, late or red-tape-laden reimbursement. This means
that every
month, many Medicaid patients call state and local Medicaid patient
information
telephone lines seeking the names of, or referrals to, providers who
do
accept Medicaid.
Staff answering these lines could be trained to inquire whether male
Medicaid patient
callers—if they don’t obviously have the sorts of congenital-, juvenile- or
adolescence-
onset disabilities that would have prevented military service in the first
place--- are
veterans. If they are veterans with honorable or general discharges
and have served
at least two years (but only 180 days for service before 1980),.then they
could be
referred to the VA for care: “While we at Medicaid aren’t requiring
you to go to the VA,
you do appear eligible for free medical care and prescriptions there---and
they won’t turn
you away even though you’ are on Medicaid !”
While not all states have
such widely-used Medicaid patient information lines, and not
all of those that do have them receive numerous calls from those seeking
Medicaid-
participating providers, many such Medicaid information lines often do get
such inquiries.
Moreover, states that distribute lists of participating providers to their
Medicaid patients
would be wise to revise such materials to succinctly summarize VA medical
care eligibility
rules and suggest that those veterans having trouble locating Medicaid
providers go to the
VA, where they’ll be seen even if they are on Medicaid.
While, at first blush, this
suggestion may appear somewhat disingenuous and even
cheekily flippant, the act is that even a small, but continuing, stream of
identified
veterans who get voluntarily referred to the VA because they
can’t find a willing
Medicaid provider can significantly reduce state costs over the long term.
But it’s
perfectly legal and proper for states to offer recipients such
voluntary referrals---
providing that they don’t actually require veterans to go to the VA
instead.
(Note: There’s nothing
wrong with states sending mailers to all those male Medicaid
| patients most likely to be veterans---for example, non-institutionalized
men without
juvenile-onset disabilities [which would have prevented any military
service by them
to begin with] who are disabled or over age 65 [the Census reports about 60%
of
them to be veterans], or perhaps just targeting those over about 55 [the
last age band
subject to the universal military draft before its end in 1973, with about
35%/40% reported
as veterans by the Census]—simply urging them to voluntarily use
their VA medical
care rights and listing VA hospital and clinic locations within the state.)
 Section
K: Identify and
Enroll ADAP and State Pharmacy Assistance Recipients
and Applicants
with Incomes Under 135% --and, by late 2005, also Those Under
150%-- of
Poverty and Enroll Them in Medicare’s New Prescription Drug Coverage
(which begins in
spring, 2004),
by signing them up for QMB, SLMB and QI. |
